JIMMIE
RODGERS ...... Blue
Yodel #9 (Standin’ On The Corner)Surely one of the oddest
sounds in 100 years of recorded music: Jimmie Rodgers, the Father
of Country Music singin’ and yodelin’ with jazz accompaniment by Louis
Armstrong’s cornet and Earl Hines’ piano. Rodgers usually recorded
with just voice and guitar, and in spite of his stature as a pioneer,
he had a rather pedestrian guitar style, and an unsure sense of time.
(His 4-bar lines often got chopped to three or three-and-a-half in his
eagerness to get at that next line.) But with the guitar in the
case, and Earl Hines’ piano dictating the rhythm, things should be under
control. However, by the fourth line, America’s Blue Yodeler began
galloping ahead, dropping a bar here and there, leaving the jazzers no
choice but to follow. But Jimmie Rodgers was never about perfection.
There was an artless sincerity to his songs and performances that made
him down-to-earth. By the time this recording was made (1930)
Rodgers was a genuine superstar, immensly popular with country and city
folk alike. His “T for Texas” was a million seller right in the
heart of the depression. His recording career lasted only six years,
his life cut short at 33 by Tuburculosis.

BILLIE
HOLIDAY ...... Strange
FruitThis extrordinary song,
admirable for the quality of its poetry as well as the brutal impact of
it’s anti-lynching message was written during the 30’s as congress was refusing
for the umpteenth time to pass anti-lynching legislation. Unsuspecting
club goers at New York’s Café Society were ambushed when the song
was first performed in 1939 by Billie Holiday. Even Café Society’s
ultra-liberal crowd of artists, activists, students and assorted leftist
types reacted with stunned silence. Gradually the applause started
and the song became a regular feature. But the backlash was immediate.
Holiday was often verbally and physically abused when she performed it,
her record company (Columbia) refused to touch it, and when she finally
got it recorded by Commodore, most radio stations refused to play it.
Time Magazine called it “A prime piece of musical propaganda for the NAACP!”
So, who wrote this little bomb? His name was Abel Meeropol who used
the pseudonym of Lewis Allan. He was a Jewish New York City high school
teacher (and member of the American Communist Party) who, like many 30’s
liberals, was lured by the Party’s promise of social justice. As it
turned out, his song -- the first significant racial protest in words and
music -- did more for the cause than the Communist Party ever did.

SOGGY
BOTTOM BOYS ...... In
the Jailhouse NowThe Soggy Bottom Boys
are the hilarious musical heroes of the Coen Brothers movie, “O Brother,
Where Art Thou?” This soundtrack recording is the newest version
of an old, old song. Historians date it back to minstrel shows
and medicine shows, but when Jimmy Rodgers recorded it in 1928, he figured
it was up for grabs, so he gave himself writer’s credit. But at least
two recordings predate Rodgers’, and the most interesting is the one by
blues guitar virtuoso Blind Blake. Blakes version, from 1927, which
contains a verse about ballot stuffing and other forms of election irregularities
-- since it comes from a performer whose home state is thought to be Florida
– seems not at all surprising.

CLARENCE
CARTER ...... Back
Door SantaClarence
Carter always seemed rootsier than the other 60s soul singers. In
fact , during all those years when “soul” was the operative word, he maintained
he was a blues singer. Fitting, then that Carter’s self-written
“Back Door Santa” puts a fat, red suit on the old blues reference to the
back-door man. Released in ’68, it made #8 on Billboard’s Christmas
chart in ’69. Clarence was just one of many sixties soul singers who
got good mileage out of holiday recordings. Both Stax in Memphis and
Atlantic in New York were busy every fall cranking out new holiday songs,
and successfully re-releasing the old ones in order to deck the halls with
greenbacks in the true American spirit of Christmas.

BOB
WILLS and his TEXAS PLAYBOYS ...... Steel
Guitar RagIn
spite of a bandstand full of cowboy hats, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
were actually a swing band with a country accent. Boasting 18 pieces
at its peak, the band flipped from country weepers and bluesy fiddle tunes
to riffy jazz instrumentals and they pioneered the Western Swing
sound which was immensely popular throughout the Southwest during the
40s. They relied heavily on hot, improvised soloing, and when Bob
hollered “Take it away, Leon,” the spotlight fell on steel guitarist
Leon McAuliffe, known far and wide for of his “Steel Guitar Rag” recorded
in 1936 with the Wills Band. Only years later did music historians
discover the same song was recorded twice during the 20’s by a black guitarist,
Sylvester Weaver. With CD reissues available, you can form your
own opinion: stolen, or just “adapted.” Of course, in a Napster
world, all music is free, so who even cares?

LOUIS
JORDAN ...... Saturday
Night Fish FryJordan’s
rowdy tale of a wild, all-night party with all revelers ending up in the
slammer was number one on the R&B charts for 12 weeks . More than
anyone else, Louis Jordan created the classic early 40s R&B sound by
parlaying jivey humor, hot sax, and shufflin’ beats into an astonishing
57 chart hits during that one decade. While other black performers
of that era, like Nat King Cole and the Mills Brothers were crooning smooth
songs with race-neutral content, Jordan sang black, and his story lines
were often very obviously about black life. It’s clear that “Ain’t
Nobody Here but us Chickens” was not a Beverly Hills experience, and
also that “Caldonia” was probably not a cousin of Pat Boone’s. Still,
Louis Jordan sold well to white audiences as well as blacks. It’s
also a fact that he had a direct influence on many rock and roll icons.
Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bill Haley , Fats Domino and Ray Charles, just
to name a few, have made that claim in so many words. And they
have also said it in their music.

JACKIE
BRENSTON and his DELTA CATS ...... Delta 88Delta
88 by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats. That’s what the label said.
But that guy flogging the piano in the intro was Ike Turner, and it was
Turner’s band, and Turner was not pleased with the label situation.
“Ballistic” is one term that’s been used. Especially since the
song shot right up the charts and gave a nice career surge to Brenston.
But no one feels sorry for Ike. He switched to guitar, hitched his
wagon to a shooting star, and got a bit of a career surge, himself.
Whether “88” qualifies as the first rock and roll record or not, it WAS
the first hit from Sam Phillips studios, the first number 1 R&B hit
for Chess Records (to whom Phillips had leased it), and it convinced Sam
to start his own label, Sun Records. Then all he had to do was wait
for Elvis to show up.

NITTY
GRITTY DIRT BAND with JIMMY MARTIN on vocal ...... Sunny Side of the MountainWhen
the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band went to Nashville in 1971 for the supersession
that produced “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” the Nashville paper called
them “long-haired rock musicians from Long Beach, California.” All
right. But astute fans of the NGDB knew that their bluegrass/blues/honky-tonk/hillbilly
roots put them closer to the heart and soul of real country music than the
“modernized” cross-over product then coming out of Nashville. Their
mission to record an acoustic session with country music pioneers Roy Acuff,
Mother Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Merle Travis and Earl Scruggs was complicated
by a wide generation gap and some serious redneck-hippie feudin’.
Acuff was known to be “scared of hair and skeered of beards” and went into
the studio with great reluctance, only to discover “nice young boys who
certainly knew what they were doing” under the mops and the chin fungus.
Though the experience did not change Acuff’s stern attitude toward hippiedom
as a whole, the success of that million-selling, three-record album brought
some giants of traditional country music to an audience that never would
have heard them otherwise. It’s currently available as a double
CD.

LOUIS
ARMSTRONG ...... Hotter Than ThatThis
1927 recording displays the early instrumental brilliance of the man who
became the most influencial musician of the 20th century. The Hot
Fives and Hot Sevens (33 sides over a two-year period) have long since passed
into jazz immortality, but at the time they went off like rockets, displaying
Louis’ astonishing technical skill in his perfectly constructed improvised
solos, and his innovative singing -- all of it delivered with a wealth of
feeling. Already, in his early 20’s, he was setting new standards
of jazz performance. He was also gradually abandoning collective improvisation
in favor of solo virtuosity. Some of the purist of purists have never
forgiven him for that. Lighten up folks.

MARIA
MULDAUR ...... Any Old Time You
Want To Come Back HomeMaria
Muldaur's soulful rendition of Jimmie Rodgers' "Any Old Time You Want To
Come Back Home" is from her 1974 Reprise album which sold a million copies
and was on the charts for 24 weeks due to one song -- "Midnight at the Oasis."
Not one copy was sold, you can bet, because of this great old Jimmie Rodgers
song. But "Any Old Time" - a smooth, well-constructed blues-ballad with
touches of Tin Pan Alley was quite unlike the usual Rodgers rough and raw
blue yodel. (Think "T for Texas" or "Mule Skinner Blues.") It brings up
the fact that Rodgers, the unschooled folk artist had friends in high places
in Tin Pan Alley, and he had many collaborators - more than show up in the
credits. His sister-in-law Elsie McWilliams, a fine songwriter and his most
frequent collaborator, complained in later years of being squeezed out of
the credits. But even without that clue, the casual listener can tell which
songs were smoothed out by outside tunesmiths. "Any Old Time" is a good
example of that. But, never fear… no song ever got so smooth that Rodgers
couldn't rough it up plenty with his usual delivery!

ROCKIN'
SIDNEY ...... My Toot TootThis
goofy little song by the late Zydeco accordionist, Sidney Simien, attracted
covers in every style imaginable … and still survived to win him a Grammy.
Zydeco (yet another of South Louisiana’s cultural achievements) is still
not a household word, but when you take Cajun music (pretty lively stuff
to begin with) and propell it by a lot of R&B and enough electronic
hardware to be heard above a rowdy crowd …. you’ve got a winner. Picture
an outdoors blues festival with all those hung-over, blanket-huggin’ music
lovers kickin’ back through 4 or 5 blues bands, AND THEN … the Zydeco band
hits the stage, and by the second bar, everyone’s up and dancin’.
Happens all the time. Still, don’t look for the T-shirt that says
“Zydeco Rules” to outsell the Dixie Chicks any time soon.

The
COASTERS ...... I’m a Hog For You
“One little piggy ate a pizza/One piggy ate potato chips/This little piggy’s
comin’ over your house/Gonna nibble on your sweet lips/Cause I’m a hog for
you, Babe…” Well, admittedly not every Leiber and Stoller song turned
out to be “Hound Dog.” But even this underdog sports the offbeat lyrics
that caught the attention of black performers back in the 50s. (Nine
R&B stars had recorded L&S songs before these two white boys were
out of their teens.) Their comedy classics for the Coasters (“Charlie
Brown,” “Yakety Yak,” “Poison Ivy”) kept them constantly on the charts beginning
in the mid-fifties. Elvis helped. He recorded more than twenty
of their songs. When the dust had settled, Leiber and Stoller had
been overwhelmingly influencial in bringing R&B from the ghetto into
the mainstream, whether with flippant jive pieces like “Jailhouse Rock”
and “Love Potion #9” or smoother stuff like the Drifters “Save the Last
Dance For Me.”

DALE
and GRACE …… I’m Leavin It Up
To YouThis
pop jewel came from the swamps of South Louisiana to be the number one record
in the land in 1963. (It was also a hit ten years later for Donnie
and Marie Osmond.) Swamp Pop, with it’s tear-drenched vocals, tripletting
piano and unison horns had its golden age between ’59 and ‘63 when a handfull
of tiny Louisiana labels carried a few young local musicians onto regional
and national charts for about 15 minutes of fame. Dale and Grace were
among the last to get in on that, because in 1964 the British Invasion came
along and wiped out all rootsier music. But, that’s progress.
Isn’t it?

FRANKIE
FORD with HUEY "PIANO" SMITH and the CLOWNS ..… Sea
CruiseIn
the 50s, Huey “Piano” Smith had a boisterous New Orleans band which might
be described as the low-life equivalent of Fats Domino’s hit machine.
Huey’s band featured careening shuffle rhythms, greasy saxophones in full
honk, lots of nonsense lyrics that sounded suspiciously like drug talk in
Creole, and oh yes…a female impersonator on lead vocals. But when
Huey Smith and the Clowns cut “Sea Cruise” for Ace Records in 1959, it was
a near-perfect example of late 50s rock and roll, and destined for the charts
from first listen. The problem: like many 50s recordings, it
was a black record that sounded too black for the white market. (As
Little Richard said “Us greasy black mens was too dangerous for white girls
fantasies.”) Very often a whiteboy cover version would hit the
street the minute a black hit broke…and stomp the original back into obscurity.
Ace Records was having none of that, so they scrapped Huey’s vocal track
and recut it with white teenager Frankie Ford whose photo they prominately
displayed on the sleeve. Result: Ace Records’ first top ten
pop chart hit.

EDDIE
BO …… Check Mr. Popeye“Check
Mr. Popeye” by Eddie Bo was just one of many 60’s dance-craze singles which
tried to sell us the notion that EVERYBODY’S doin’ it, and we dare not be
left out. “The Twist,” maybe, but “The Fly”? Or “Pony Time”? Give
us a break! Eddie Bo’s entry in the dance-craze derby was not a big
hit (except in New Orleans) but it was surely the most entertaining, since
he spins out a comic soap opera involving Popeye, Bluto, and Olive Oyl,
with no boring dance instructions until side two. And if you think
all this started with rock and roll, you’d be about 70 years off.
The Cakewalk was the first huge dance craze and sparked a gaggle of songs
back in the 1890’s. Then in the 20’s, the Shimmy, Charleston and Black
Bottom followed suit. The Charleston was a coast-to-coast obsession,
and every songwriter pounced on that one. The difference then was
that the dance crazes were genuine, and the songs were written after the
fact. In other words, “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”
was no doubt prompted by sibling rivalry, not media manipulation.

CHARLES
BROWN …… Please Come Home For
ChristmasCharles
Brown’s “Please Come Home For Christmas” is a sophisticated blues
from 1960. However, Christmas as blues subject matter goes way back.
Slaves in the American South were allowed only that one day off each year.
So, blues songs have often celebrated Christmas (Blind Lemon’s “Christmas
Eve Blues” in 1927), or mourned it (Leroy Carr’s “Christmas In Jail – Ain’t
That A Pain” in 1929), or funked it (James Brown’s “Santa’s Got A Brand
New Bag”). Charles Brown died in 1999 at age 77, having had a profound
influence on West Coast blues, and having left us some fine
recordings, notably “Driftin’ Blues,” “Black Night” and “Trouble Blues.”

ROD
STEWART …… Wild Side of LifeThis
recording brings up the subject of recycling old folk songs for fun and
profit. Our commercial culture gets pretty cranky about anything
that’s not brand new, but sometimes a fossil breaks through. And although
“ Wild Side of Life” is only about 70 years old, consider the Animals’ “House
of the Rising Sun”, which had it’s roots in 16th century England (but spread
its branches into 20th century America’s pop charts – big time!).
Other number ones were “Walk Right In” by the Rooftop Singers, “Goodnight
Irene” by the Weavers and “Stagger Lee” by Lloyd Price. Then there was the
hundred-year-old fiddle tune called “Eighth of January” which became a #1
hit after “The Battle of New Orleans” lyrics were written to it. Our
ruling on that? Doesn’t count.

FLAMIN'
GROOVIES …… City Lights“CITY
LIGHTS” by the FLAMIN’ GROOVIES never lit up any charts, but this far-ranging
garage band always had as much musical fun with the roots as possible.
For those who don’t remember, before music succumbed to the blood-sport
of marketing, there was a lot of that going on. And every rock
radio station was an all-inclusive party…everything from reggae to bluegrass,
gospel to folk, Stevie Wonder to Johnny Cash, Led Zeplin to Peter, Paul
and Mary. Well…life in the past lane.

IRMA
THOMAS …… Time Is On My Side“Time
Is On My Side” by Irma Thomas (the “Soul Queen of New Orleans”) was released
on Imperial in 1964 and the Rolling Stones pounced on it immediately.
Their cover version became an international hit – their first top ten.
It also marked the beginning of the end of a ten-year spree of New Orleans-produced
hits, as British Invasion music took over the airwaves. (By 1965 Texan
Doug Sahm was calling his band the Sir Douglas Quintet just to get air play.
And it worked! Remember "She's About A Mover”?) And what
happened to Irma’s original version of “Time Is On My Side”?
It didn’t even make the national charts. However the original Irma
Thomas still records (on Rounder), and is one of New Orleans’ leading live
attractions.

CARL
PERKINS …… Blue Suede ShoesIn
early ’55, Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” zoomed to the top of all
three Billboard charts – Country, Pop, and R&B, and remained a hot triple
seller for months. An unprecedented event. Perkins’ sassy
shoe fettish served notice (more so than anything Elvis had ever done) that
the south had sprung a leak, and pure honky tonk hillbilly music was leeching
into urban America’s radio supply. By 1957, when The Everly’s “Wake
Up Little Susie” topped the charts, city-bred baby boomers didn’t know or
care that, stylistically, it was pure Appalachian mountain music.
It was just part of the free-wheeling variety of early rock radio.

CANNON’S
JUG STOMPERS …… Walk Right InThis
jug band from Memphis recorded “Walk Right In” in 1928 -- 35 years before
it topped the charts for the Rooftop Singers. In this case, the original
artists,Gus Cannon
and Hosea Woods got credit. Unfortunately, many times when early
folk material was used, the user got credit, and the originators got folked.